Modesty In The Capital

Check out George Clooney carrying his own bags and suits in Washington DC yesterday. George arrived by train and is in town to meet with US government officials about Sudan from where he’d just come.

This, to me, is when he’s the most appealing. On stage during a performance of 8, smiling and gracious with flashbulbs in his face after a gruelling travel schedule to a war-torn country, ready to lobby passionately for diplomatic intervention. During a panel discussion last night at the Council on Foreign Relations, George argued:

“There’s a difference between two armies fighting and what the Geneva Convention calls war crimes—the indiscriminate bombing of innocent civilians. It’s all the same people who were involved in Darfur. They’re scaring the hell out of these people”—the men, women and children of the Nuba Mountains—“and they’re killing them and trying to get them just to leave.”

“There’s a lot of things swallowing up the news right now. There was the Arab Spring. Go down the list of the big news stories that were happening at the time. News organizations were covering them because they’re big. Syria is still a big story today. Iran is a big story today. We’re in the middle of an election year ... John [Prendergast] and I are gonna do every press thing in the world in the next three days, and people will know more and more about it.”

And of course, as it always is with George, some humour too. Here’s his quip when asked about, in the simplest terms, how to stop the bad guys:

“We could have a surprise party in Lake Como for Omar al-Bashir. Come on over! It’s a great party! And have the ICC waiting for them.”

I love you like this. And you are like this often. So... why is it you feel that this, just like this, is not enough to win you an award?